Bennett: ‘I’m an advocate’ for WOF on private rental housing

Bennett: ‘I’m an
advocate’ for Warrant of Fitness on private rental
housing.

Social Development Minister Paula
Bennett has told TV ONE’s Q+A programme that she supports
the introduction of Warrant of Fitness on private rentals
requiring them to be warm, dry and safe in an effort to
reduce the effects of child poverty.

She told host
Susan Wood that she sees the benefits of such a system but
says it’s not up to her but up to Cabinet and in
particular Housing Minister Nick Smith about whether to
introduce that. Earlier this year, Mr Smith introduced a
base standard for state house rentals.

“I see
absolute merits in there being a base standard for homes,”
Ms Bennett says. “But I think we need to be careful in how
we implement something like that. It’s the same with the
accommodation supplement. If we look at increases there,
often the effect is it’s not going into the individual’s
pocket or that vulnerable family; it’s going into the
pockets of the landlord.”

She estimates there are
between 150,000 and 270,000 children living in poverty in
New Zealand but says New Zealand has “one of the most
generous welfare systems in the world”.

But
Children’s Commissioner Russell Wills says a WOF for all
housing rentals is essential.

“The patients that
I see typically have cold, damp houses, they can’t afford
to go to the GP, they often can’t afford to do the basics
that our kids would take for granted, like to go on school
trips and have stationery and a uniform, shoes that fit.
You know, their houses really are in a shocking state.
Most kids who are living in poverty live in private rentals,
not state rentals but private rentals, and those houses are
in appalling state. So having a warrant of fitness again
is one of those very practical recommendations that the
Expert Advisory Group recommended. We’re going to see
that in state housing first, and then we need to see it in
private rentals too. We know that will make a big
difference,” he says.

Mr Wills says he doesn’t
think New Zealand can end child poverty, “but we can bring
it back to the kind of levels that were there when you and I
were kids,” he told Ms Wood.

Conservative Party
CEO and former head of Work and Income NZ Christine Rankin
says it is dysfunction not poverty that creates problems and
that more money is not the answer.

“Where there
is poverty, it’s because people cannot cope, they don't
have life skills, they don't have the day-to-day skills that
most of us have to survive through the difficult times, and
that's what we've got to invest our money in,” Ms Rankin
says.

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE
and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1.
Streamed live at www.tvnz.co.nz

SUSAN
Children’s Commissioner Russell Wills says a plan
to tackle poverty should be enshrined in law. So will this
government do it? I asked Social Development Minister
Paula Bennett.

PAULA BENNETT – Social
Development MinisterWell, I think we do have a
plan.

SUSAN
But not enshrined in law.

PAULA
I heard you say that, but we have
got the Children’s Action Plan, which is for those more
vulnerable children, which is a 10-year plan that is working
its way out. The better public service targets – I would
argue that pretty much all of them are going to positively
affect children’s lives when we get that stuff right. So
I could wrap it all up and give you, you know, a nice title
to it or call it a strategy and everyone might feel better,
but I think there is a comprehensive work plan that
Government is
initiating.

SUSAN
But it doesn’t tie you to it, and it doesn’t
tie future governments to it, and you can pick and mix –
you can take the bits that you want to do and do things with
them and ignore the rest. It doesn’t tie you to it as it
would if it was enshrined.

PAULA Yeah, that’s
absolutely
true.

SUSAN So have you
thought about enshrining something in law that really does
tie you to it?

PAULA
Yes, we’ve thought about it, and I think it’s
the wrong approach. I think
it—

SUSAN
Why?

PAULA
Because times are changing. We
need more flexibility. It’s what happens on the ground
that matters most. What sort of flavour this year will be
different next year? We’ve just seen it with the GFC
(Global Financial Crisis) and what happened there as far as
the effects that it had on people’s incomes and homes.
We need to be able to work quickly. We didn’t need a
piece of law, if you like, that crossed over a whole range
of portfolios that meant we couldn’t actually take those
blinkers off and do what needed to be done at the
time.

SUSAN The
Children’s Commissioner would say it’s worked in the
UK.

PAULA Has
it?

SUSAN
That’s what he would
say.

PAULA
Well, that’s his opinion, and
that’s great. I did think listening to his clip, I
thought, ‘Well, really, is the UK the utopia for children
that he makes it sound to be?’ You know, I’m not—
I’m not a big fan. I don’t think it is the sort of way
to go.

SUSAN
What about getting multi-party support? What
about crossing the floor and trying to get something that
everybody agrees with?

PAULA
At the end of the day, what is
going to make the biggest difference for child poverty, in
my opinion and this government’s opinion, and it is
tackling the tough stuff. That is long-term welfare
dependence. It’s actually more jobs, yeah, so that’s
business growth. It feels like to me that Labour’s more
interested in welfare growth and not business growth, and as
a consequence, are we ever going to agree on that?
Probably not.

SUSAN
They’re talking about the trickle down and the
trickle down taking a long time to trickle down, if it’s
trickling down at all.

PAULA Yeah, the
biggest effect for those families is seeing their parents in
jobs, seeing those kids well educated so they have better
futures. We fundamentally don’t agree with how you do
that with Labour, and unless you’re tackling that stuff,
it’s just going to look good. You’ll get your photo
shot, and everyone will feel better that we’re doing
cross-party, but it won’t have the substance behind it
that genuinely means a change for those
children.

SUSAN
How long’s it going to take before we do start to
see some changes?

PAULA
Well, we are seeing changes, so 3000 sole parents
off benefit last month— last quarter alone, you know,
fewer on benefit. You know, that just means they’re
getting into jobs. We are seeing their incomes rise.
We’re seeing business confidence come in. We’re seeing
those homes being warmed up. We’re seeing rheumatic
fever being tackled. We are seeing results.

SUSAN You are
quoting numbers to me; you’re quoting measurements, which
is great. You’re saying you’ll give me an absolute
number. Dr Wills has had to go out and get funding from a
charity to actually measure childhood poverty. Shouldn’t
you be doing that so you can measure your success or
otherwise?

PAULA
Well, he’s independent, and
he’s perfectly entitled to do
that.

SUSAN
Yeah, but why aren’t you doing this? You’ve
just thrown a whole lot of numbers at me as a measurement.
Shouldn’t you be measuring childhood poverty so you know
how you’re doing with it?

PAULA
Because my priority is action, and
I think that we can—

SUSAN But how
can you act if you don’t know what you’re dealing
with?

PAULA
Well, we do,
though.

SUSAN
You don’t have a baseline.

PAULA
I think we do know. There’s
plenty of measures of poverty, and he quoted them himself,
and, in fact, my own department do one that I certainly take
notice of and take stock
of.

SUSAN So
what is your measure of poverty?

PAULA So why do an
official measure that then by very definition still has,
quite frankly, you know, it’s, sort of, wherever you put
the measure, you’re always going to have people in
poverty, because you’re taking a median income, taking
housing prices off it, so there’s always going to be
people—

SUSAN
So what is your measure, though? What is the
measure you are working to in terms of that
picture?

PAULA
Well, I actually base most of mine at the moment on
our BPS (Better Public Services) targets, so I am looking at
fewer assaults on children, fewer of those mothers and
families on benefit and long-term welfare dependence. I
base it on those children that are in ECE and actually
getting ahead, so actual real stuff that makes a difference
to them in their
homes.

SUSAN Is
Dr Wills wasting his time and money doing
this?

PAULA
No, I don’t think so. I think
he’s passionate about it. I think, as he says, it gets
the conversation going, which is really important. I think
we’ll continue to debate the measure, and that’s
fine.

SUSAN It
does look like your government doesn’t want to be tied to
it, that you don’t want to be tied to this number so we
can go, ‘Yes, you’ve done well,’ or, ‘You’ve done
not so well.’

PAULA
Well, I haven’t got enough money to spend, which
I know people will argue with, but I’ve decided to spend
it on actions that are on the ground and making a
difference. If there are others that want to put money
towards measuring poverty, well, good on them. I’m
certainly not
anti—

SUSAN
It’s $100,000 a year. It’s not a lot of money
to collate it.

PAULA
So what’s the harm in someone
else doing that,
then?

SUSAN Do
you accept the number of 265,000 children in poverty that
the Children’s Commissioner does
accept?

PAULA I
think it’s anywhere between about 150,000 and
270,000.

SUSAN
That’s a big range.

PAULA Yeah, it is,
isn’t it, because it’s relative. Actually, we have one
of the most generous welfare systems in the world. You
know, we dish out $266 million just in hardship assistance
on top of the base benefit. We have accommodation
supplement – $1.2
billion.

SUSAN
So is Christine Rankin right, then? Is it a
matter of dysfunction rather than
poverty?

PAULA I
think we have long-term dependency problems. I think— I
agree with Dr Wills that we see people now that perhaps they
were poor 25, 35 years ago, but now we’re talking
generations coming through, and that gets— you lose your
aspiration, you lose your hope, and that gets
hard.

SUSAN And
this lower social mobility is a real issue too, isn’t
it?

PAULA
Social mobility is absolutely the
issue, you know, that long-term poverty. You can see the
effects it has. That’s why we are tackling right at that
end with long-term welfare dependency, education, getting
those kids so that they’re able to get the better jobs
when they’re
older.

SUSAN
Substandard housing – a really big issue for
health, certainly, and many other things. Are you going
to—? When are you going to bring the warrant of fitness
scheme and extend it out for all private
landlords?

PAULA
Yeah, look, I’m an advocate for it, yeah, so that
leads to very interesting conversations within my party and
around the Cabinet table, and I think that’s
healthy.

SUSAN
So you’d like to bring it in
tomorrow?

PAULA
It’s a healthy debate to have,
but we have to be really careful of the consequences of
that, so the—

SUSAN
What? Warm and dry houses? What are the
consequences?

PAULA
Rents going up because landlords have to pay more
to make sure they’re at a standard. That is a genuine
concern of the National Party, and I think it’s really
genuine to be looking at that and making sure we’re not
putting increased costs on landlords that they then just
directly pass on to
tenants.

SUSAN
But shouldn’t there be a baseline in terms of
what a house— it should be warm and dry and insulated. I
mean, they can get the insulation probably at a discount via
the government anyway.

PAULA Absolutely, and
that’s why we’ve made things like Warm Up New Zealand
and put another $300 million into it in the last Budget, so
I can’t disagree with you, but I think we need to be
careful in how we implement something like that. It’s
the same with the accommodation supplement. If we look at
increases there, often the effect is it’s not going into
the individual’s pocket or that vulnerable family; it’s
going into the pockets of the
landlord.

SUSAN
I don’t get that, you know. You don’t use
that argument around cars. We have to warrant cars, and
yet we don’t warrant homes that people live in, that we
get all sorts of diseases through living in those unhealthy
homes.

PAULA
Yeah, look, I don’t disagree with you. I see
absolute merits in there being a base standard for homes,
and I can’t—

SUSAN
So do you think you’ll win that
argument?

PAULA
Look, West Auckland’s my home,
and I see far too many there that
are—

SUSAN So
do you think you will win that argument and we will see that
extended in the near future, or is that something you’re
just going to keep on debating?

PAULA
I think Government has already
made substantial steps in saying that they are looking at
it. They will start with state houses, and that’s a step
for us, and I do believe there will be future
steps.

SUSAN In
what timeframe?

PAULA
Oh, I can’t give you a
timeframe. That’s not my decision to make. That’s a
Cabinet decision, and at the end of the day, Nick Smith is
the Housing
Minister.

SUSAN
You care, I care, and I suspect all of our viewers
very much care about children in poverty. It just
doesn’t sit well with being a New Zealander, I don’t
think. But there is a perception, an impression, if you
like, that your government is business-focused, happy to
hand out the money to businesses, perhaps, but
uncharitable.

PAULA
Yeah.

SUSAN
What’s your response to
that?

PAULA
Well, that’s unfair. You know,
at the end of the day, we are spending more on vulnerable
families in New Zealand than in any previous government that
I’ve, kind of, known of. When I look at the hundreds of
millions that we’re putting into supporting people into
work and warming up those homes, into rheumatic fever, into
all of those massive— teen parents, which is a particular
one for me. You want to know who’s most vulnerable?
It’s those young mums with those babies that feel
isolated, uneducated and don’t have hope. We have pumped
literally millions into them. I’m going to keep doing
that, and I’m seeing results for it. There’s nothing
quite like a young woman coming in with that nomination, you
know, that form to fill in for university and you just know
that her life is going to change and so is that
baby’s.

SUSAN
So should the Government be doing poverty
research? I asked Dr Russell Wills that
earlier.

DR RUSSELL WILLS – Children’s
CommissionerWell, what I’d like to see from
our politicians is a plan, and measuring should be part of
that. In the UK, they’ve done that, and what’s special
about that is they’ve got cross-party support, and that
makes it sustainable. The plan in the UK for child poverty
is embedded in legislation. There are targets and milestones
for ministers and for chief executives, and that’s what I
think we need to have in New Zealand – that kind of
leadership.

SUSAN The minister,
Paula Bennett, would say there is a plan and we’re too
busy addressing it to actually bother measuring it.
What’s your response to that?

RUSSELL
Well, I think if we really care about
anything, we have a plan and then we measure progress
against that. The Government’s done some really good
things. So in the May Budget, we saw 3.2 billion for
things that will make a difference to children, like social
housing, insulation, early childhood education, parenting
programmes, rheumatic fever. Those are all good things,
and the Expert Advisory Group and I are really proud of
those gains. More importantly, we changed the conversation
so we now have programmes like this talking about child
poverty. That’s a huge achievement and one that I’m
really proud of, and, actually, I think Government’s proud
of those changes
too.

SUSAN What
is your definition of poverty?

RUSSELL We’ve got five
definitions for poverty, and we’re going to measure it in
all those different ways to give the whole picture. So
what matters is, firstly, who’s poor, because it’s the
youngest children who are most affected by poverty. Severe
poverty really matters, so being on less than half the
median income, missing out on the things
that—

SUSAN
But what is that in a dollar value? What is that
in a dollar value?

RUSSELL
Dollar value?

SUSAN Yeah.
What are you living on a year if you’re living on
that?

RUSSELL So when
you— Yeah, so when you— MSD look at that, they take 50
per cent of— after housing costs are taken out – so
that’s about 13k (thousand) for an earner. But remember
the graph is very steep south of that, so most people on
less that 50 per cent are on a lot less than
that.

SUSAN Less
than $13,000 a year?

RUSSELL Yeah, after housing
costs and a lot less than that. And then you can also look
at the things that kids miss out on, like being able to
afford to be able to go to the GP, shoes that fit, a
raincoat, their own bed, those kinds of things. And that
material deprivation really matters. That’s what makes a
big difference to education and health and social justice
outcomes.

SUSAN
Finance Minister Bill English ruled out actually
measuring poverty because he said it makes no sense –
relative poverty doesn’t make sense because there’s no
absolute measure. Are you going to come up with some sort
of absolute measure of poverty that says if you’re on less
than, you are in poverty?

RUSSELL
Yeah, we’re going to do both. So you have both
what I call relative measures and also absolute
measures. They need to be kept up to date with
inflation, so you take a baseline. It’s called a fixed
line measure, and we have both of those. We look at severe
poverty. We look at the ability of families to get out of
poverty. One of the unique things about New Zealand is our
social mobility is really low. So if you’re born into a
low-income family, the likelihood of getting out of that is
lower than in many countries. We need to track that as
well.

SUSAN
Do you know why that is – why we can’t move
up?

RUSSELL There’s lots
of structural barriers in there that make that harder.
Government’s trying to do something about that. Getting
people back into work is an important thing. That improves
social mobility. That’s a good thing that Government’s
doing.

SUSAN Do
you think we can end childhood
poverty?

RUSSELL
No, but I think we can bring it back to the
kind of levels that were there when you and I were kids.
You know, when I was 12 and delivering Dad’s scripts
around Maraenui, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t
be safe. Now, Maraenui, Flaxmere, poor suburbs like that
are much poorer now, and they’re just different. You
wouldn’t send a 12-year-old to deliver scripts and the
pharmacist junk mail around the streets of a place like
Maraenui anymore. It’s different. So and we know, for
example, 1991 – child poverty almost trebled with the
Budget changes. It can be different. Other countries
with similar GDP to us have lower rates of child poverty.
We’ve been lower in the past. We can do it
again.

SUSAN The
numbers would indicate 265,000 New Zealand children living
in poverty. Would you accept that
number?

RUSSELL Yes, I
do. We use that – that’s a particular definition.
It’s less than 60 per cent of median household income
after housing costs. It’s the internationally accepted
definition, so that’s the one that we
used.

SUSAN And
tell me what life is like for these 265,000 children. They
probably can’t go to the doctor. I mean, have they got
shoes to go to school? Do they get school lunches
regularly? What is life like for
them?

RUSSELL These are the
kids that paediatricians seen on children’s wards and in
outpatients every day, so the patients that I see typically
have cold, damp houses, they can’t afford to go to the GP,
they often can’t afford to do the basics that our kids
would take for granted, like to go on school trips and have
stationery and a uniform, shoes that fit. You know, their
houses really are in a shocking state. Most kids who are
living in poverty live in private rentals, not state rentals
but private rentals, and those houses are in appalling
state. So having a warrant of fitness again is one of
those very practical recommendations that the Expert
Advisory Group recommended. We’re going to see that in
state housing first, and then we need to see it in private
rentals too. We know that will make a big
difference.

SUSAN
Do you think you’ll be able to convince this
government and maybe future governments, maybe get some sort
of cross-party support for that plan we have talked
about?

RUSSELL
Yeah, this is too important for party politics,
Susan, and I think New Zealanders expect more from their
leaders. In the UK, they managed to get cross-party
support and agreement to have a plan, to have targets and to
make ministers and chief executives accountable. I cannot
see why we can’t do that here. And for it to be
sustainable going forward, we have to get cross-party
support. I think, actually, that our political leaders do
care about child poverty. No matter what hue they are, I
think they do care, and I think that it’s in them to have
a joined-up plan for
this.

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